If NCAA is done, careful what you wish for

Aug. 14, 2013

Written by

Drew Sharp

The Detroit Free Press

The NCAA is the monster that can’t understand why it isn’t likeable. It’s bloated from hubris and hypocrisy. It chokes on its convoluted bureaucratic maze. It’s annoyingly aloof to the contradictions in its mission of maintaining “amateurism.”

But it does have one thing going for it: When you’re arguing for transformative change, you’re better off with the liar that you’ve known for years as opposed to the liar you’re just meeting. Can’t you see Sterling Cooper’s Don Draper pitching that advertising tagline?

The NCAA’s crumbling. It’s potentially staring at a class-action lawsuit from former college athletes demanding compensation for the NCAA commercialization of their likeness on video games. The returning Heisman Trophy winner, Texas A&M’s Johnny Manziel, currently is under investigation for wrongly profiting off his autograph.

But those screaming the loudest for the peasants to take down the evil despot don’t realize whatever governing authority erected in its place would only make the current problems worse.

The NCAA and its member institutions have done a poor job of articulating their position. It opted for morality, protecting the virtues of amateurism while greedily cashing in on its product. Instead, the NCAA should employ a more realistic — cold-blooded, if you will — business approach to the changing public sentiment regarding paying players.

“We walk a fine line between the commercialization of these young people and the development of the resources that allow us to be in the world we’re in,” Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon said.

In other words, it’s not always fair. But it’s a business reality.

Brandon and I are of like minds in that any pay-for-play system would only foster further corruption and infiltration of rogue boosters, agents and recruiting conduits. For every pothole it fills, it creates three more.

What’s to stop an open bidding war for the highest ranked recruits? How do you determine which players make the most money?

Where do you think these big-time athletic departments will go to recoup the revenue lost in providing more financial equity to players? They’ll squeeze more money out of the consumer, whether it’s an increase in ticket prices or more expensive and restrictive TV access to games.

Brandon told me Michigan should have a $9 million “surplus” at the conclusion of this budgetary year. Brandon rejects the notion of calling the $9 million “profit.”

“There’s this misconception that we’re lining our pockets with the proceeds,” he said. “It’s an operating surplus. (Athletic departments) are not run like a profitable business. It’s an operating surplus that’s immediately put back into our capital investment, paying off debt for infrastructural improvements. In the private sector, if you constantly put all of your surplus back into that capital investment, that business would never exist. You’d never get investors. You’d never get bankers because they want a return for their money.”

Brandon said he saw recent numbers that showed only 22 of the 127 top spending athletic departments made money. UM was one of the 22.

The NCAA isn’t on food stamps. Nobody wants to hear: “Oh, woe is me” from the administrators. But the big, bad monolith could make its argument for resistance more convincing if it dropped the amateurism ruse and simply embraced the business realities of pay-for-play.